


bears me unresistibly on

by laudatenium



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: American Civil War, Angst, Atlanta History Center, Civil War (Marvel), Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 07:03:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4010362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laudatenium/pseuds/laudatenium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a war council.</p><p>Love and war aren’t far removed from each other anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bears me unresistibly on

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 890fifth’s [Round 13](http://890fifth.tumblr.com/post/118529679975/the-quote-is-from-de-daumier-smiths-blue-period). 
> 
> I was originally going to do something more of a comfort thing, but my head said “What’s the fun in that?” And then I visited the Atlanta History Center for the first time in a few years (so I could plan out the second installment of Histories in Marble and Formaldehyde, coming soon), and combining the fact that MCU’s Civil War is filming in the area, RDJ gave a commencement address a couple miles down the road, and just the Stony film that covers my eyes all the time now, I really want this to be a scene, but of course it’ll never happen.
> 
> I don’t think this really has a specific universe. So, chose your own adventure, I guess.

 

 

_“My love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.”_

 

-  Maj. Sullivan Ballou, USA

July 14, 1861, in a letter to his wife which was never sent.

He was killed a week later at the Battle of Manassas.

 

 

 

It’s a war council, he tells himself.  Just a war council.  To discuss . . . well, he doesn’t even know.

 

Steve pays his admission and clips the tiny plastic tab to the front of his shirt.  The logo of the museum is a star surrounded by white stylized waves, on a blue background.  Fitting.

 

The grounds are nearly empty as he makes his way to the main museum building.  He doesn’t know why.  Perhaps the construction is keeping people away, or its out-of-the-way nature gives it an air of tranquility.

 

Though probably it’s because no one cares about the past.  Or cares to learn from it.

 

The grounds are nice, and it’s sad he can’t linger.  Lush dark green foliage that could wrap around him like a cocoon.  He can hear water somewhere nearby, but there’s no time to search for it.

 

A war council.  He feels like he is in West Side Story.  Two insignificant factions fighting over something pointless that no one could properly trace to the beginning.  Just fingers pointing, and dead friends, and broken hearts.

 

Well, it wasn’t too far off.

 

The main museum building is quiet.  Drop cloths and plastic sheeting have obscured all but a few exhibits.  The one he is looking for is probably the biggest.  He tries not to be too optimistic about the title:  TURNING POINT: THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 

 

The exhibit is aged, but well loved.  Early nineties, by his reckoning.  But the faster time moves the faster things become outmoded and obsolete.  He passes an old man pondering a selection of rifles and cavalry swords, and a pair of be speckled teenage girls, one clinging to a freestanding exhibition case while her friend pats her sympathetically on the shoulder.

 

“They can’t close Turning Point.  I won’t let them,” the girl clinging to the case says through her tears.

 

“Sure they can.”  The crying girl lets out a sound of anguish at her friend’s words.  “They’re moving the Cyclorama stuff here, and we’ll get new stuff.  Stop your whining.  It’s not like they’re burning it to the ground.”

 

“But Turning Point is my _life_.”

 

The friend sighs.  “I know.  We’ve been over this.  Literally all you talk about is Lee.”

 

“Lee is bae.  Grant can go fuck himself.”

 

He passes them, cases filled with antique artillery, and preserved clothing.  There is a solemn air, one of a losing army and dead ancestors.

 

Tony was sitting in the main room, on a bench in front of a display of tattered battle flags.  The horizontal stripes that for so long had been Steve’s famed Tony’s shaggy hair and slumped shoulders, the dull blue of his phone screen illuminating the weariness in the lines of his face and betraying the bags under his eyes.  The tiny blue plastic clip that acted as an admission ticket felt like a slap in the face.  Like the silver band he found himself still sketching when he forgot about it.

 

“Like it?” Tony says by way of greeting, not looking up from his phone.  “It glorifies slavery a bit too much for my taste.”

 

“What?  Because it gives a more honest picture of the Southern perspective?”

 

Tony looks at him in surprise.  “Captain America supports the South?  Lemme call the presses.  They’ll brand you a slave owner next.”

 

Steve took a seat in front of the Confederate flag.  “The problem with the Civil War is that the Southern perspective is completely disregarded.  The South succeeded because they saw the Northern government completely obscuring their say in their own government.  The issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation made the war about slavery, because the UK and France were ready to lend their support but had already abolished slavery and couldn’t be seen supporting slave-owners.”

 

“But slavery is bad.  So the Union was right.”

 

“Yeah.  And people aren’t cut-and-dry.  Drawing a line on a map doesn’t dictate how people think.  There were Southern abolitionists and Northern supporters of slavery.  The war wasn’t about slavery; the people had polarized themselves to the point where they could do nothing _but_ fight.  But it’s easier to write slavery into history books.”

 

Tony looked unconvinced.

 

“Look at it like this: the colonies declared independence from the UK because they were not getting representation in their government.  Yet because they won, and the South lost, one is remembered for their love of liberty and the other is remembered for slavery.  Both had slaves.  But both wanted to be free to make the decisions concerning their own lives.”

 

Tony gave the tiniest of shrugs meaning he gave up.  “Still.  Captain _America_ doesn’t fully support the country he’s named after.”

 

“People seem to forget the Confederacy was America, too.”

 

“But the North won.”

 

“No one wins in war, Tony.  Especially not in civil wars.”

 

“Misnomer, you always said.”

 

Silence filled the room.  As always, Tony pulled the discussion away from its purpose, distracting him, making him fumble for what he was supposed to do, say.

 

He’d missed it terribly.

 

Steve was the first to break the fragile silence.  Because he needed to say the truth, in a setting without yelling or gunshots.

 

“I still love you.”

 

Tony snorted.  “And yet, there’s this little issue with registration.”

 

“In spite of it.  I just wish love were enough.”

 

For the first time, Tony allows the façade to crack.  It always amazed Steve, the sheer immensity of emotion that Tony could amass behind an impassive front.  In the past, Steve felt so privileged that Tony would peel off the layers and bare himself, but now he just is burdened with Tony’s pain as well as his own. “Why can’t it be enough?”

 

“God, Tony.  I don’t have an answer for everything like you,” Steve nearly capitulates, because all he has ever wanted in the future is to keep the world safe and keep Tony happy.  But the tragedy of their situation is that it must be in that order.  He swallows the lump in his throat and wills the tears not to fall.  “Because it’s _not_ enough.”

 

“Why the hell can’t it be?”  Tony’s begging now, eyes that are always so fierce now soft and pleading.  “We can just . . . leave.  We can _do_ that, Steve.  We’re not obligated to do anything.  No more than the rest of the world.  _We’re_ the ones who give and give, and soon enough we’ll be nothing, while the world will still demand _more_.  Let’s _get out_ while we still have _something_.”  Tony gazes listlessly off at a Plexiglas case filled with 150 year old guns.  “Before we wreak everything to the point where I . . . _we_ can’t fix it anymore.”

 

“So you’re suggesting we run away?”

 

“ _Together_.  We run away _together._ ”  Tony’s eyes are bright in the dim light, but shattered somehow, like looking at an image of the idealized future from behind broken glass and clinging to the shards.  “There are plenty of them left.  Let them sort it out.  Meanwhile we stop rescuing everyone else, and finally rescue ourselves.  You told me once you felt like you were always treading water.  You’re just prolonging drowning.  Let’s get out of the water before it kills us both.”

 

Steve remembers that night.  Clinging to one another in the dark, whispering secrets against sex-warmed skin.  Their secret honeymoon, they called it.  A time for just the two of them.  One of the best weeks of Steve’s life.  But it can’t be _their_ life, not forever.

 

“Do you hear yourself, Tony?”  Steve’s laughing, slightly desperately, because it’s better than crying. 

 

“I’ll surrender.”

 

“ _What?_   Tony, stop talking like this.”

 

“Then what do I have to do to prove to you that you mean more to me than some stupid law?”  Tony spits through his teeth.

 

Steve chooses his next words carefully.  “You mean more to me than anything, Tony.  But we have built our lives on protecting people.  And this concerns protecting people.  And if you backed down or gave in . . . I wouldn’t love you anymore.  Because that’s not _you_.  And I think the same goes for you as well.”

 

He watches Tony’s reaction.  For the longest time he looks ready to strike, lash out, to desperately claw into already bloodied flesh, killing any chance of rescue.  Then slowly, the fight drains from him, leaving a waft-like husk, empty because that’s what Tony does, bleeds out quietly, and never lets anyone see until the final moments.

 

“So we fight?”  Tony’s voice was small, like he was begging Steve to say it wasn’t so, that they could lay down their arms, that they could still fix this.

 

“We fight.”

 

Tony nods once, jerkily, then again, with more conviction.  Steve stands, not because they have nothing left to say to each other, but because there is too much, and he could never express all that this is killing him.  If he stays, he’ll rush over, kiss and surrender, but this isn’t about them, and he can’t let it be about them anymore.

 

“Steve.”  Tony’s hoarse voice is quiet, but Steve is so attuned to it he could hear the whisper across an ocean.  “Don’t-“  his lip quivers as he mouths uselessly for words, “don’t listen to me.  I’ll say something I don’t mean.  You know me.  Don’t listen.”

 

He nods his assent.  He knows Tony, mind and soul, and knows better than anyone how Tony’s mouth spills lies against his will.  He can honor that request.

 

So he turns.  The next room is circular, bleak gray, with the sound of marching footsteps pouring through hidden speakers.  The sound of the trudge home of a defeated army.

**Author's Note:**

> And cue my friend demanding a Civil War-era Civil War AU from me (she did, no lie). She’s the one crying over Turning Point. Like I don’t have enough to write. But it’s summer! Fuck school and commence the Stony fucking.
> 
> And in other news, I am trash.


End file.
